Had a great visit with Prairie View Interscholastic League chairman Robert Brown at the recent UIL state basketball tournament where the PVIL had a display on its history and I reminded him that despite Aycock’s place in history, there wasn’t one single Aycock athlete in the PVIL Hall of Fame.
He encouraged me to send him any information of any Aycock player who might be worthy of induction and while there are many, I chose to send him the bios of Leroy Wright and Billy Ray Locklin, who both had success on the professional level in their respective sports: basketball and football. That’s a good place to start.
Wright was drafted by the Boston Celtics and enjoyed a great career in the old American Basketball Association after averaging 23 rebounds a game during his collegiate career at Pacifi c. Wright played on the very fi rst championship team with the Pittsburgh Pipers and was the fi rst African-American coach in the ABA.
Locklin played with the Oakland Raiders in the NFL and is a Canadian Football League legend. His grandson Torry just guided Rockdale to a state championship in football if you hadn’t heard.
Brown asked me for their addresses so hopefully this will jumpstart the process in seeing them in their rightful place and Aycock properly represented as it rightly should be.
On the subject of the PVIL, Michael Hurd has written a book concerning the league appropriately titled “Thursday Night Lights: The Story of Black High School Football in Texas” referring to the fact that African American schools were forced to play on Wednesday and Thursday nights because they had to play at the white school in town and those schools used their own fi elds on Friday night.
Hurd is a former colleague who I worked with at the Austin American-Statesman (although he started out as a sportswriter, he was on the news side at the time) and is as nice a guy as they come.
A University of Texas graduate, Hurd was an air force medic in Vietnam. His ex-wife Tracy was the sports editor at the Statesman for a while. Hurd previously penned a book on black college football.
“I was puzzled the fi rst time I heard the phrase ‘Friday Night Lights’ Hurd writes in his new book, “Thursday Night Lights: The Story of Black High School Football in Texas”.
Hurd grew up in Houston in the 1960s and attended segregated schools.
Like most black schools, the teams he followed had to play its games on Wednesday and Thursday nights. Those were the games Hurd attended and remembers.
“This book,” said Hurd, who is now the director of the Prairie View A&M Institute for the Preservation of History & Culture, “is meant to both remember and introduce the PVIL: what it was, why and how it came to be, why and how it came to an end.
“The league’s offi cial documentation doesn’t go much deeper than yearly results of state championship games. This lack of data left me at the mercy of aging memories and myths.”
When the PVIL joined the University Interscholastic League in 1967 Hurd said, “the UIL received a sudden infusion of blue-chip black players who would legitimize the league’s claim of having the best high school football talent in the land.”
Of course, Rockdale Aycock plays an important role in the history of the PVIL—which was formerly called the Texas Interscholastic League of Colored Schools from 1920 through 1963—having been the only school to win state championships in football and basketball in the same school year, 1954-55.
Sadly, there are scant records dealing with the PVIL, with only fi nal scores in championship games mostly available.
Aycock students should be thankful they have had someone in the form of Susie Sansom-Piper who has been steadfast in recording the history of the school in all aspects, from athletics to academics to one act play.
She has worked tirelessly in making sure the exploits of the school will never be forgotten and she is to be commended—and she has.
I recall that all of old Austin Anderson’s records were destroyed in a fi re. A shame.
The PVIL produced some outstanding athletes, many who are in the college and NFL halls of fame, including Austin Anderson’s Dick “Night Train” Lane, “Mean” Joe Greene, Gene Upshaw, Bubba Smith, Ernie Ladd and Texas-El Paso basketball star David Lattin.
Thanks to authors like Hurd and our own Sansom-Piper, the PVIL and its rich history will not be forgotten, nor should it be.
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